The 'worse than we thought' model

New model calculations by ETH researcher Thomas Frölicher show that global warming may continue after a stoppage of CO 2 emissions. We cannot rule out the possibility that climate change is even greater than previously thought, says the scientist.

A change in ocean heat uptake in polar regions has a larger effect on global atmospheric temperature than a change at low latitudes. A fact that has not been given enough consideration until now. (Photo: Courtesy of Eric Galbraith, McGill University)

Many scientists believe that global warming will come to an end if, some day, human succeeds in stopping the release of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. It would, indeed, be hotter on Earth than before industrialisation, but nonetheless it would not get even hotter. Climate physicist Thomas Frölicher questions this notion by using model calculations and creates a more pessimistic picture in a study published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change. According to his model calculations, it is very possible that the Earth’s atmosphere could continue to warm for hundreds of years even after a complete stop of CO2 emissions, and that temperature levels stabilise at an even higher level at a later stage.

“In the long term, the temperature increase could be 25 per cent greater than assumed today,” says the scientist, who carries out research as an Ambizione Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation in ETH professor Nicolas Gruber’s group.

A more realistic model

Frölicher and his co-authors from the USA use one of the world’s leading climate models for their calculations, the ESM2M model that was developed at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton. It represents physical and biogeochemical processes – such as the exchange of greenhouse gases and heat with the oceans – at a far more detailed level than many previous models. “The model is closer to reality,” summarises Frölicher.

In this model, the researchers simulated an Earth on which 1800 gigatons of carbon are emitted instantaneously into the atmosphere. By way of comparison: 1000 gigatons are believed to lead to a global warming of 2 degrees Celsius. Frölicher’s model calculation corresponds to an extremely simplified scenario. In reality, greenhouse gases are released over a period of several decades or centuries. The simulations, however, are well suited to illustrate fundamental principles, explains the climate scientist.

Regional ocean heat uptake is the key

“Much of the CO2 released into the atmosphere and the heat trapped by the CO2 goes into the ocean sooner or later – approximately 90 per cent of the excess heat has been taken up by the ocean over the last 40 years,” explains Frölicher. The regional uptake of heat, however, is crucial. To date, not enough attention has been given to the regional heat uptake of the world’s oceans in climate research. With the help of the ESM2M climate model, the scientists are able to show that a change in ocean heat uptake in the polar regions has a greater effect on the global mean atmospheric temperature than a change near the equator. The researchers use these differences to explain why their calculations contradict a scientific consensus that global atmospheric temperature would remain constant if emission were suddenly stopped.

Frölicher acknowledges that his calculations are based on a single climate model and it should not be ruled out that different results might be obtained if other climate models are used. However, it is evident to him that the magnitude of global warming in the next few centuries is less clear than previously thought. Rather, we should consider that climate change could turn out to be even greater than we have thought until now, says the scientist. “If our results stand up to a repetition with other modern and detailed models, this would mean that global warming considered beyond the end of this century has been significantly underestimated to date.”

A 25 per cent increase in global warming would also mean that humans could release 25 per cent less greenhouse gases to achieve climate goals such as the two-degrees Celsius target. In its assessment report published a few months ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC assumes that limiting the global warming to less than two-degrees Celsius will require cumulative CO2 emissions to stay below 1000 gigatons of carbon. Since preindustrial times, humans have already consumed around half of this budget, i.e. 500 gigatons. If Frölicher’s results were correct, the “emissions cake” would be only three-quarters, i.e. 750 gigatons instead of 1000 billion tons of carbon. Thus, limiting the warming to 2 degrees would require keeping future cumulative carbon emission below 250 gigatons of carbon, only half of the already emitted amount of 500 gigatons.

If, as many scientists now think, CO2 has little effect on what we perceive as global warming, then the very obvious conclusion is that eliminating our output of CO2 will have no effect on global warming. Up or down or sideways.

Climate and weather are full of “lag effects”. Hottest time of day and of year, for example. Perhaps many of the “climate change” effects we see today are “lagging indicators” from the end of the “Little Ice Age”.

As usual, no mention of the Biosponge thT SOks up CO2.
“Today, the average rate of energy capture by photosynthesis globally is approximately 130 terawatts,[8][9][10] which is about six times larger than the current power consumption of human civilization.[11] Photosynthetic organisms also convert around 100–115 thousand million metric tonnes of carbon into biomass per year”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis

I’m glad that they published this important work based on a single climate model. Now they can try the other 75 climate models one at a time and publish 75 more papers. I presume that they picked a model in the middle so they can publish 38 more papers saying it is even worserer than we thought in the last paper. Then if it does get cool, they can start on the climate models on the other end and work backwards. It’s called climate simulation masturbation. And we pay for it.

“Much of the CO2 released into the atmosphere and the heat trapped by the CO2 goes into the ocean sooner or later – approximately 90 per cent of the excess heat has been taken up by the ocean over the last 40 years,”
There are two subjects in this sentence, thus what they say is:
1. “Much of the CO2 released into the atmosphere goes into the ocean
2. “Much of the heat trapped by the CO2 goes into the ocean
To 1: It is also true that much of the CO2 in the ocean is released into the atmosphere. There is a continuous exchange in search of the natural equilibrium. Has nothing to do with warming.
To 2. I don’t think that heat is “trapped” by the CO2, it is radiated by the CO2. And how does that radiated heat force itself into the ocean? By convection? Certainly not by radiation.

We shouldn’t have let them get away with the ocean heat content uptake / 4 Hiroshima bombs per second line.
Extrapolating the miniscule trends out over 100 years still leaves us with no real warming that anybody could notice.
The theory is based on significant harmful warming, not miniscule barely measureable trends.
Too late. All the warmers are on board with the “line” now. It is working with the non-objective followers.

This evokes the Fecal Interrogative. “What is this sh!t?”
To take this model seriously means dismissing all lesser previous models, which is a nice start. But there is still a leap of faith…”those were rubbish but this one isn’t”
Still, nice to hear the science ain’t settled.

Hang on… Every time I point out to people that the Earth has had far more CO2 in the past, the universal response has been “yes, but that happened gradually, today it is happening rapidly”. That, according to every warmist I have encountered, has been the CRITICAL difference. And here we are now, assuming, not merely a quick change, but an INSTANTANEOUS one? The effrontery of the dishonesty is even more appalling than the dishonesty.

I think I’ve got climate model fatigue. I couldn’t care less what’s happening in the dream world of climate models. Uncannily, they never predict the only thing we know that is almost certain to happen – the next glaciation

Ok I am calling foul and garbage on this most excess heat is going into deep ocean physics says so.
If heat is hiding in the deep ocean in the arctic then there is a mechanism that is doing it because you have a large amount of heat concentrated into a small area distant from where the energy arrived that is a driven process. If the process wasn’t driven it would quickly establish a new equilibrium and then you have a problem because you would get something that looked exactly like “the pause”.
If sensible heat was trapped by a driven mechanism it has to radiate IT’S THE LAW OF PHYSICS. Lets see those dipsticks that believe this garbage can work out how long even just the units of time would be enough to tell them something. Guess what you would be able to measure it because it has a very clear fingerprint … of dear not so hidden now and the theory is testable 🙂

A planet with frozen poles strikes me as inherently unstable. How do we know that the global temperature would not self-stabilize at a higher level all on its own? Perhaps what we see in the historical record as global climate cycles were set in motion by extraordinary events such as major asteroid strikes. Maybe the earth is occasionally getting rung like a bell. If this is the case, then no amount geoengineering or carbon mitigation is going to prevent the earth from finding its natural level.

Don’t mock this paper. Embrace it.
What it says is that most of the heat is going into the oceans. Well, with a heat capacity 1200 times that of the atmosphere, we have pretty much nothing to worry about then. Then it says that warming will exhibit itself hardly at all at the equator but more at the poles. Well, I’ve pointed that out many times in this forum. In other words, of what little warming is left after the oceans absorb most of it will show up mostly in the coldest places on earth where it will do the least possible harm. Then the paper goes on to argue that warming will take place perhaps for centuries after the CO2 increase. Well hooray, we’re saved! With warming spread over that great a time period, we have many, Many, MANY generations to adapt to the teeny amount of warming that will show up mostly at the poles.

Frölicher and his co-authors from the USA use one of the world’s leading climate models for their calculations, the ESM2M model that was developed at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton. It represents physical and biogeochemical processes – such as the exchange of greenhouse gases and heat with the oceans – at a far more detailed level than many previous models. “The model is closer to reality,” summarises Frölicher.
Really? Just because it has more variables to fiddle and tweak? Just because Frölicher says so? I noticed there’s no mention of validation. But let’s see. I deduce from that verbiage that the model is the GFDL-ESM2M, about which Willis says, “there very large year-to-year variation in the the GDFL results, up to twice the size of the largest annual changes ever seen in the observational record …”http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/21/one-model-one-vote/
Closer to reality, huh? I don’t know about that. Frölicher talks about ocean heat uptake, but the GFDL-ESM2M violin plot matches the land-only CRU and BEST plots better than the HadCRUT plot.

Strange how this turkey thinks that atmospheric warming is likely to continue for hundreds of years after CO2 emissions cease, yet that warming seems to have ceased already even though CO2 continues to rise. Is there something I’ve missed here, or is he totally delusional / irrational?

With the help of the ESM2M climate model, the scientists are able to show that a change in ocean heat uptake in the polar regions has a greater effect on the global mean atmospheric temperature than a change near the equator.

For the same amount of energy (heat) there will be a greater temperature difference if the heat is radiated from the poles rather than the tropics because energy is radiated as T^4. This is basic physics. Because ‘global mean atmospheric temperature’ is an average, the more the heat manifests as polar, the higher the average for the same amount of heat.
I wonder how much these guys got in grant money to publish such an obvious result based on the input assumptions.

“The model is closer to reality,” summarises Frölicher.”
Ah yes, reality…..what a concept…..
Of course “closer to reality” is a reductio ad absurdum logic fallacy given that 73 out of 73 CMIP5 climate models (that’s 100.00% for you math majors out there) are above reality and the projection/reality model gap only gets worse from here….
Need I remind this, umm.., “scientist” that 1/3rd of ALL CO2 emissions since 1750 have been made over the last 17 years with no increase in the global warming trend and actually FALLING temperatures since 2001… Oh, my..
Oh, right… the “missing heat” has all gone into the oceans… Even if this were true, the a priori assumption is that this “missing heat” was almost all created by increasing CO2 levels, while empirical evidence makes it painfully clear that: cloud cover, solar activity flux, ENSO flux, Galactic Cosmic Ray flux, AMO/PDO flux, “natural variability”, Jet Stream flux, etc., have all been substantially underestimated by climate models, as evidenced by the huge descrepancies between the models and reality…
Under any definition/application of the Scientific Method, CAGW is a bust. The CAGW zealots may “catch a break” with an El Nino cycle next year, but the La Nina to follow will make 20+ years of no warming trend.
By 2017, solar activity will be at its lowest level in centuries and the next solar cycle starting from 2020 could well be the start of a Grand Solar Minimum, based on the continued collapse of the Umbral Magnetic Field and other falling solar activity metrics. On top of that, the AMO enters its 30-yr cool cycle around 2020 and the PDO has been in its 30-yr cool cycle since 2008.
I think the scientific community (outside of the realm of the IPCC gatekeepers) is reaching a point of singularity, where more and more prominent scientists will have to come out against CAGW, lest they lose any semblance of credibility and, more importantly, government funding.
Historians, psychologists and sociologists will debate the mass hysteria/delusion created by CAGW for centuries. How embarrassing for our generation. Hopefully future generations will learn from our mistakes, but given the government-run educational system, perhaps even this cautionary tale will be squandered away.
“He who controls the past, controls the future.”~ George Orwell, 1984.

What an ignorant scenario these alarmists use to make the completely predictable, disreputable refrain: “it is worth than we thought”.
Why not a scenario that shows what would happen instantly if 1800 gigatons was removed from the atmosphere?
These rent seeking clowns are just trying to keep the $ billion per day of tax payer money flowing to their community.
It is almost as if they are just going through the motions.

“The model is closer to reality,” summarises Frölicher. — OP[1]
Physics models are strange beasts. Back in the days of Mario Bros., Joust and other video game classics, each issue of an object moving about was the finest hand-rolled hackery. If you could find any proper relation to F=ma, friction, or other common notions that you were a devout follower of Timothy Leary. It was utter and complete nonsense from the most basic principles. But it worked, it matched what people intuitively expect about the way things move about. And the profits flowed.
And then came the ‘proper’ physics models. They were all much closer to reality; not least of which for starting with F=ma. And they did produced the most absurd and unrealistic behaviour you can imagine. But the profits flow when the game is fun, and bad physics make a bad game. So there were heroic efforts involved in getting ‘proper’ physics proper. The consequence of getting ever closer to reality is that the ‘normal’ cases in the physics engines did, in fact, get quite good at a rapid pace. But the edge cases, long running cases, and asymptotic cases got disasterously worse. In the end it took about 20 years of profit driven motives and capitlistic culling of bad behavers until the ‘proper’ physics got themselves back to the level of some 8-bit plumbers fighting flowers that shot fireballs.
Stating that the model is ‘closer to reality’ is almost always a guarantee that the results are more absurd than if they’d just faked it in the first place.
[1] Haven’t tried italics yet, hope it sorted out right.

Could well be that warming might continue even if all manmade emissions end.
Sure why not, as the team has failed to establish any measurable effect on global temperature caused by anthropogenic CO2, it is very likely some other agencies are warming us up from the last mini ice age.
So as AGT does not correlate well with co2 concentrations, so future warming may not correlate well with co2 reductions.
These guys will not voluntarily return to reality, it is going to take pink slips for most and criminal investigation of a few.

Frölicher acknowledges that his calculations are based on a single climate model and it should not be ruled out that different results might be obtained if other climate models are used.
—————————–
An example of a different climate model being one that vaguely resembled the climate of Earth.

OMG. It could be worse than we thought. And it could just as easily be a whole lot better than we thought.
If we magicked 1800 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere (totally implausible hypothetical) and our model is reliable (and we know it isn’t even close) then it’s possible that Bad Things might happen. This is just stupid pandering to the alarmists and those who rejoice in alarm.
It is a million light years away from science. It is shameful.

I’ve often wanted to ask these guys..
In a bushfire, there must be a massive CO2 concentration in the atmosphere above the fire…
So it must trap all that heat… right.. 😉
until its GONE !!
Haven’t these guys EVER heard of convection ???????

@davidmhoffer
“What it says is that most of the heat is going into the oceans. Well, with a heat capacity 1200 times that of the atmosphere, we have pretty much nothing to worry about then.”
But it will wake up Godzilla!

Historians, psychologists and sociologists will debate the mass hysteria/delusion created by CAGW for centuries.
——————————–
No, they won’t. They all have their snoots buried in the government’s trough too. They won’t say a word to rock the boat.

Re: “In the long term, the temperature increase could be 25 per cent greater than ASSUMED TODAY.”
So great are the uncertainties in the global surface temperature record, that nobody knows by how much global surface temperatures have changed since 1850.http://gst-fiasco.blogspot.co.uk/
For all we know, global surface temperatures could have risen by 0°C since 1850, in which case the surface of the world is warming at rate of 0°C per ~163 years. If that rate were to increase by 25%, it would still be warming at a rate of 0°C per ~163 years.
The uncertainties involved in measuring the overall temperature of the oceans, from surface to sea bed, are no less than those involved in measuring surface temperatures.
Apologies to all at WUWT for endlessly repeating the same point.

A computer program can’t be better than the knowledge by those who writes the modelprogram. Simple as that. Btw One of my exams is systemprogrammer 1971. No matter what I followed it up to present day.

“According to his model calculations, it is very possible that the Earth’s atmosphere could continue to warm for hundreds of years even after a complete stop of CO2 emissions.”
—
So even if humans completely stopped making any contributions of CO2 to the atmosphere, we are still doomed. In that case, what possible reason is there to cut CO2 emissions? We might as well burn our fossil-fuel candles at both ends and enjoy life while we still can.

Jquip says:
November 25, 2013 at 7:25 pm
In the end it took about 20 years of profit driven motives and capitlistic culling of bad behavers until the ‘proper’ physics got themselves back to the level of some 8-bit plumbers fighting flowers that shot fireballs.
===============
a very interesting observation. in the real world, when objects are close together, they interact rapidly. so rapidly that if you try and simulate their proper motion, it chews up the entire physics engine leaving no time to simulate the rest of the world, making a realistic physics engine a nonsense.
so, instead of modelling individual interactions you need to settle for modelling time slices, treating the world like frames in a movie, because in the end that is enough to fool the human eye. however, what you quickly find is a loss of precision in the motion of the objects, such that energy and momentum are not preserved. you end up with missing heat.

” New model calculations by ETH researcher Thomas Frölicher show that global warming may continue after a stoppage of CO 2 emissions. We cannot rule out the possibility that climate change is even greater than previously thought, says the scientist. …etc.”

[+ emphasis]
OOoooohhh; I am impressed. NOT!
Just my opinion, but, with all its conditional verbiage, about the only use for a printed version of this “study” would be in an old fashioned outhouse where it couldn’t clog the plumbing.

Well, the cat’s out of the bag. The new bandwagon for grant-hungry climate researchers (I hesistate to use the word ‘scientists’) is proving their latest deep ocean heat sinks theory, in order to explain away the real world stasis/slight cooling of the past 16+yrs which they failed to predict.
It just goes on and on………..

The models have to be right, one of gores brain washed climate reality
Pinheads just told me so, and he proved it by showing ten data points
which they are based on so they must be right. Sceptics are the same
People who said smoking did not cause. Sarc ( al did own a tobacco farm but
No mention of this fact.

Frohlicher needs to cut the long talk and just come out flat-footed and say it: CO2 is magic! At 400 ppm those 400 CO2 molecules impart enough kinetic energy to the remaining 999,600 other molecules comprising air to destroy earth as we know it. And it keeps doing this in spite of changing seasons and day and night–not to mention the vagueries of H2O changing state, moving vast amounts of heat around and generally confounding the whole process.

The half mile thick sheet of ice in the room no one wants to talk about.
*** Billy Liar says:
November 25, 2013 at 5:52 pm
I think I’ve got climate model fatigue. I couldn’t care less what’s happening in the dream world of climate models. Uncannily, they never predict the only thing we know that is almost certain to happen – the next glaciation ***
Indeed — Pippen Kool , what say you about this?

If 25% more warming means additional 0.25 to 0.5 °C to the lack of current warming what’s the heck?
About 2/3 of the released CO2 remains in atmosphere (overall balance since 1750, and yearly releases and concentration rise show this).
Beyond releasing enthalpy of solution of CO2 when dissolved in water (-19.4 KJ/mole at room temperature) the trapped CO2 does not play any role on forcing and warming.

Yet another new climate model from those who already believe in CAGW.
Would anyone really expect the results to produce anything other than Thermageddon?
Oh, and Thermageddon after their expected lifetimes.
One day I would like to see a computer climate model which accurately reflects the geological record, namely that carbon dioxide levels always follow (circa 800 years) changes in temperature. Unfortunately, in climate science you are not allowed to model reality, as this has an undesirable impact on research funding.

So their thinking goes something like this: {Just after some astute observers pointed out that the models which we’ve been using for making our projections were failing miserably (gross OVER-ESTIMATION), we discover [using “new, improved models”] that we we might have been UNDER-ESTIMATING Global Warming all along!}
Right. Without missing a beat. These people live in their own alternate reality.
It pains me that a noble institution such as the ETH should be actively involved in such blatantly unscientific babble. There should be an independent Quality Control Department whose goal would be to coax climate researchers back to reality, away from the model world – where CO2 drives climate.
Last week’s news from the same group:https://www.ethz.ch/de/news-und-veranstaltungen/eth-news/news/2013/11/wege-aus-der-unsicherheit.htmlhttp://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2051.html
Summary: even though our short range and medium range prognoses actually suck, we absolutely are right in the long term. After all, we are the Oracles of the future climate!
Keep those R&D Swiss Francs coming our way, so we can get even better at what we do. And on the odd chance that we’re proven wrong – which can only be done from, say 2060 or 2080 – we’ll have been dead for decades by then anyway, so you can’t even hold us responsible!
I love this sentence: “In der Physik sei es oft so, dass ein einzelner Zustand nicht vorhersagbar sei, wohl aber der Durchschnitt.” (roughly: it is often the case in physics that a single state may not be predictable, whereas the average is in fact predictable).
So why don’t they take a hard look at WHY the mean atmospheric surface temperature of this planet has NOT been following the ensemble of the models for the past decade and a half?
Mind-blowing. And they get away with it, too.
Kurt in Switzerland
P.S. The ETH doesn’t do ONLY AGW propaganda (there is plenty of good research ongoing in other fields).

The government always wants to ban guns because of their perceived danger. They should really look into banning models as they are far more dangerous. I trust a young kid with a gun more than I do a scientist with a model. The kid will be more responsible. /tongue-in-cheek

“We cannot rule out the possibility that climate change is even greater than previously thought,” says the scientist.
====================================
I cannot rule out the possibility that my granny is a wagon.She hasn’t sprouted wheels just yet, but anything is possible, eh?

Waiting for the day when these model jokers stop behaving like newly minted grad students in love with their models. It is amazing that the bubble of hubris is not burst by exposure to reality. Do a reality check on the selected model and then try to understand why it does not work most of the time.

Nice, alway as i reed the word model i know its totally wrong. A wrong input gives a wrong output. But if you believe your input is wright then you also believe your output is right. Also there is the point of the wrong temperature data witch go’s up by the month. They believe the earth is warming in stet of colling so thats what they are looking at.
Some thing like that happens in Holland right now. Yes is weather but is sent weather climate and climate weather? Ye I now strange but look the climate your in makes the weather. A warm climate gifts a warm weather pattern and a cooler climate o well you see it. That way a warmer climate never could have a rely cold winter.
Oke back to the weather, where looking at winter time now and it becomes colder how much? The weather models don’t know it and are swirling all over the place. Why is that? Why is it so difficult for a model to predict winter? Why for that matter is it difficult to predict every weather other then the usual? There are two re sens.
One: the models look in the past to see correlations, so they look back to warmer situations.
Two: weather people think the earth is warming and snow is a thing from the past.
You see that the model looks back and get wrong signals as input whit the result that the output is wrong to.
Even if the model sees cooling then there is some weather geek who don’t believe that because the world is warming.
Agwers live in a virtual realty totally ignoring the real world and the only thing they believe are the models they make up whit the wrong data they made up to. And even if there is a signal like the pause in warming they don’t understand that because of the models telling different.

We cannot rule out the possibility that climate change is even greater than previously thought, says the scientist.
or
We cannot rule in the possibility that climate change is even greater than previously thought, says the scientist.
One gets reaserch money in and helps keep ‘the cause ‘ on track the other does not .
But both are equally ‘valid ‘
Guess which one climate ‘scientists’ would go for.

I cannot rule out the possibility that my granny is a wagon.She hasn’t sprouted wheels just yet, but anything is possible, eh?
More likely she is a horse. Four major appendages already extant. Almost anything is possible. No?

“Hang on… Every time I point out to people that the Earth has had far more CO2 in the past, the universal response has been “yes, but that happened gradually, today it is happening rapidly”. That, according to every warmist I have encountered, has been the CRITICAL difference. ”
Yes, but I don’t know why it makes a difference. The hypothesis of greenhouse gases is based on their concentration, not the time it took to get there. It’s just another way of moving the goal posts.

As a graduate of the ETH this saddens piece me tremendously. The Department of Physics used to be home to people like Wolfgang Pauli, and Albert Einstein, now there is the sad image of “progressive” science taking them back to before the age of reason.

“A change in ocean heat uptake in polar regions has a larger effect on global atmospheric temperature than a change at low latitudes. A fact that has not been given enough consideration until now.”
This should have been published on April 1st. The only heat uptake to the Arctic ocean that is worth considering is from transport of warmer sea water from further south when the AO/NAO are more negative, and the AO/NAO are more negative in *global cooling* episodes.
The Arctic ocean didn’t do so well on heat uptake from the atmosphere this summer lol:http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2013.png

“M Simon says:
November 26, 2013 at 3:47 am
If the heat/energy is hiding in the ocean wouldn’t we note the transport of said heat/energy?
So how dd it get there?
I’m waiting.”
So is Trenberth but his computer game will just not comply!

I’ve often wondered how the seas were getting warmer.
I would have thought that even a 1 degree increase in air temperature wouldn’t do a great deal, particularly as only the first few metres at the surface would be warmed via conduction from the air. As water is denser than air, it would take a long time to get the sea temperatures to match.
Given that water takes hundreds if not thousands of years to circulate from the depths of the deepest oceans to the surface, using air temperature to warm the seas would be an inefficient solution. Whereas infra-red can penetrate several hundred metres depth and is possibly a far more effective way of warming the oceans.
If the sea (mostly) and not the air is melting the sea ice, this may also explain why the Arctic sea ice is melting rapidly (because the water is getting warmer) and the Antarctic land ice isn’t melting rapidly.
Now, if more infra-red is being trapped by the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere via MMGW you would logically expect that less IR would be reaching the oceans, especially if you assume that the rate of infra-red is constant, so the oceans should actually be cooling or at least not warming.
Unless, either the carbon dioxide is being dissolved into the water (when you would expect completely the opposite to happen – gasses escape as the temperature increases) or there is an increase in infra-red.
Is it me (in genuine ignorance)? Or can anyone explain this conundrum?

New model calculations by ETH researcher Thomas Frölicher show that global warming may continue after a stoppage of CO 2 emissions. We cannot rule out the possibility that climate change is even greater than previously thought, says the scientist.
Still stuck on stupid only this far in.

I stopped reading after the 2nd mention of ‘models’. Yawn. Okay show us all of your data sets, algorithms, data models, data base diagrams, assumptions, E-R diagrams and syntax. Make it public now. I want to see your entire IT application build and review your Stats methods. Oh, you don’t provide such info – yet this is what the warmtards call ‘science’ ? Laughable.

With the help of the ESM2M climate model, the scientists are able to show that a change in ocean heat uptake in the polar regions has a greater effect on the global mean atmospheric temperature than a change near the equator.

This ocean heat uptake at the polar regions is having a devastating effect on Antarctica. It has lead to growing extent since the 1980s and extreme snowfalls in Eastern Antarctica. It’s still bloody cold too. As for the Arctic we have see a tiny, tiny growth of sea ice this past summer on 2012. Record cold since 1958 above 80 degree north. It really is much, much worse than we thought.

Owen in GA says:
November 25, 2013 at 8:05 pm
GIGO – Garbage In Garbage Out. I often see this statement used on WUWT in the context of AGW computer models. In a computer programming class a professor explained there is something far worse than GIGO. And that would be GIGO – Garbage In Gospel Out.

Gil Dewart says:
November 25, 2013 at 5:17 pm
Way back in the 1990s, a CACA advocate claimed that we might still be in the Little Ice Age, & that only human GHG emissions were giving the appearance that we’re coming out of it. So, naturally, what we’re doing is much worse than we thought.

If it happens is essential here: A change in ocean heat uptake in polar regions has a larger effect on global atmospheric temperature than a change at low latitudes.
As both poles seems to gain ice it is very possible that the poles loose heat, so it will be a lot colder on the globe in the future.

RobR: I totally agree. When I write a model, I then compare it with the real world thing it is meant to represent. When it agrees, I am happy and look for things the model might predict that I can then look for in the real world. When the prediction doesn’t match, I go back to the code assumptions and see what I did wrong. By definition, only the real universe is correct – our understanding of it is only a dim echo seeking affirmation.

“It represents physical and biogeochemical processes – such as the exchange of greenhouse gases and heat with the oceans – at a far more detailed level than many previous models. “The model is closer to reality,” summarises Frölicher.”
and
“Frölicher’s model calculation corresponds to an extremely simplified scenario. In reality, greenhouse gases are released over a period of several decades or centuries. The simulations, however, are well suited to illustrate fundamental principles, explains the climate scientist.”
“Far more detailed” and “extremely simplified scenario”. If these ARE both true, then the previous models must have been poor indeed. OR, we’re seeing more GIGO…
I also have to wonder what he was “fröhlicher” (glad, merry, happy, etc.) about? More grant money, perhaps?

“If our results stand up to a repetition with other modern and detailed models, this would mean that global warming considered beyond the end of this century has been significantly underestimated to date.”
Since the Fecal Interrogative was already taken, I guess I am left with
“Oh my goodness gracious!”

We cannot rule out the possibility that climate change is even greater than previously thought, says the scientist.
Yes, this explains why warming has stopped for some 17 years, and counting. The CO2 has simply switched to “climate change” mode.

“Climate physicist Thomas Frölicher questions this notion by using model calculations and creates a more pessimistic picture ”
As long as they have models they will never run out of papers to write; and never discover anything.
This must be the perfection of uselessness. Watch squiggles on screen, apply for grant, get a Caramel Frappuccino Extra Grande, copy & paste text from last paper, replace squiggles, publish, ka-ching, repeat…

Martin says:
November 26, 2013 at 4:52 am
“Given that water takes hundreds if not thousands of years to circulate from the depths of the deepest oceans to the surface, using air temperature to warm the seas would be an inefficient solution. Whereas infra-red can penetrate several hundred metres depth and is possibly a far more effective way of warming the oceans.”
You are wrong, Martin. IR only penetrates the skin layer; maybe a hundred micrometers.
It is UV that can reach hundreds of meters of depth; that’s why light gets progressively more blue the deeper you dive.

wsbriggs says:
November 26, 2013 at 3:30 am
“As a graduate of the ETH this saddens piece me tremendously”
Yep. They used to have a splendid reputation. And the ETH is not even on EU territory; so it is not obvious why they partake in the UN madness.

I cannot agree with Frölicher. His first sentence reads: “…Recent studies have suggested that global mean surface temperature would remain approximately constant on multi-century timescales after CO2 emissions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 .” The claim by these nine references that temperature will stabilize for centuries after the addition of CO2 has stopped cannot be checked. His implied assertion that addition of carbon dioxide will warm the air is also rendered false by the fact that addition of CO2 for the last 15 years has had no influence on global temperature. People associated with the global warming movement do not wish to admit this. They use alternate language like “pause” or “hiatus” to refer to this cessation of warming. Or they claim that the missing heat has disappeared into the ocean bottom. But if someone finds a fifteen year stretch of no warming should they not make it their business to find out if this is something new? I say this because there really was another stretch of no-warming in the eighties and nineties that lasted for 18 years. But it was covered up by a fake warming by guardians of official temperature until last fall. I discovered this fake warming while doing research for my book “What Warming?” [1], even put a warning about it into the preface of the book. Nothing happened for two years but then suddenly, last fall, the big three of temperature, GISTEMP, HadCRUT, and NCDC decided to give up showing that fake warming. What they did was to align their eighties and nineties with satellites that do not show it. This was done secretly and required cross-Atlantic cooperation. We can now add these “liberated” 18 years to the current 15 year standstill and find that there has been no greenhouse warming whatsoever for the last 35 years. With this history of no-warming it is silly to talk of carbon dioxide warming that plainly does not exist. Obviously the Arrhenius greenhouse warming is not there. It so happens that this is exactly what the greenhouse gas theory of Ferenc Miskolci requires. His theory that came out in 2007 [2] postulates that if more than one greenhouse gas simultaneously absorb in the IR an optimum absorption window is established that they jointly maintain. In the earth atmosphere the greenhouse gases that matter are carbon dioxide and water vapor. Their joint absorption window has an optical thickness of 1.87 in the IR. If we now add carbon dioxide to air it will start to absorb and the optical thickness will go up. But as soon as this happens water vapor will start to diminish, rain out, and the optical thickness is restored to its previous optimal value. When his paper came out he was disbelieved by the global warming establishment and shouted down. But by 2010 he had empirical proof. He used NOAA database of radiosonde measurements [3] that goes back to 1948 to study the absorption of IR by the atmosphere over time. And discovered that absorption had been constant for the last 61 years while carbon dioxide at the same time increased by 21.6 percent. This means that addition of this substantial amount of carbon dioxide to air had no influence on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed.
[1] Arno Arrak, “What Warming? Satellite view of global temperature change” (CreateSpace 2010)
[2] Ferenc M. Miskolczi, “Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres” Quarterly Journal of Hungarian Meteorological Service 111(1):1-40 (January-March 2007).
[3] Ferenc M. Miskolczi, “The stable stationary value of the Earth’s global average atmospheric greenhouse-gas optical thickness” E&E 21(4):243-262 (2010)

ETH: Instead of going from bad to worse, they’ve gone from Wirth to worthless….
Sad, lot of good research, etc., Pascal only one of the results…
Even though they’re not in the EU, the money still flows wherever AGW goes.
Didn’t Switzerland introduce a law a couple of years ago about protecting plants
from the “pain they endure” when they are harvested, and that they have rights too?

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